


In Which The Avengers' Worst Enemy are The Avengers

by athanasynt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, During Canon, Endgame, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, I Tried, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Bad At Tagging, Light Angst, Loki (Marvel) is Not Amused, Post-Endgame, Spoilers, Steve Needs a Hug, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Time Travel, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athanasynt/pseuds/athanasynt
Summary: (ENDGAME SPOILERS - BE CAREFUL!)Time travel was a messy business. By going back to the past and getting the stones, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, and Scott Lang had seriously screwed up the 2012 Avengers' universe. In an alternate timeline, Loki escaped with the tesseract, Steve knew about Bucky and Hydra was extremely confused.This is the aftermath.





	In Which The Avengers' Worst Enemy are The Avengers

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame broke my heart, here's some fanfic for me to cope. This is me trying to write what happens in the alternate timeline that the Avengers created by time traveling. I might get some things wrong, or my idea of time travel might be different than yours, so I'll apologize for that in advance.

Everything was fine until it wasn’t.

The Avengers thought that they had saved the day. Loki had been stopped, arrested and about to be sent to Asgard for punishment. The sceptre was in safe hands. 

Then everything went to hell, all because of a few strangely coincidental coincidences.

Firstly, Tony Stark’s arc reactor malfunctioned and just like that, he was on the floor, gasping for breath. No one had expected that. Everyone stopped arguing and instantly checked on Stark, Loki and the tesseract momentarily forgotten. He just saved the day, he barely survived, he couldn’t die because of a glitch.

To make things worse, the Hulk came crashing through.

Did all this happen just because they didn’t let him use the lift? The Hulk smashed, destroying the flooring. People ran. Guards fell.

And when Stark finally recovered, thank Thor, the universe decided to mess with the Avengers even more. The man stood up weakly, still taking in the incredibly unfortunate sequence of events that had just occurred. But everything was fine now. The Avengers could just pretend nothing bad happened and everything would be fine. They’d go out for shawarma and continue on with their lives.

“Where’s Loki?”

And the world broke as if it were ripped to shreds.  
-  
On the bright side, the Hulk distracted the Avengers so Tony could change out of the uniform he was wearing.  
On the other side, the Hulk distracted Tony so Loki had taken the tesseract, the tesseract which Tony desperately needed to save the universe, and left without a trace.

Thank god this was just an alternate timeline, and none of the events that happened due to Tony and co’s time shenanigans would affect his future/present in any way. If it did, Tony wouldn’t be surprised if he ceased to exist right after Reindeer Games touched the blue cube.

Leaving the Avengers Tower angrily, Tony and Scott hid in an abandoned car and hoped that Steve would have better luck retrieving the mind stone.

“We messed up,” Scott said plainly.

Tony didn’t bother replying. He was thinking of a way to fix things. But there were no way to fix things, weren’t there? No fails. No do-overs. He looked outside for any sign of Bruce or Steve. They weren’t here yet, and that was either a good thing or a bad thing…

Either way, they messed up.  
-  
Steve was quick on his feet to react.

When he heard even the slightest moment, he knew something had to be done. He had to do something right here, right now before the elevator reached its destination.

His eyes were on the prize. The mind stone. That’s all he was here for. No meddling with the Hydra agents, not in this timeline.

He saw his chance and took it.

Leaning in close, Steve waited for the perfect moment to strike, “Hail Hydra,” he whispered calmly.

There was no fight. The spies stared at him in shock, and Steve simply took the sceptre and completed his mission. The elevator stopped with a soft thud, and Steve walked out without a single expression on his face. Behind him, a group of armed men stood idly.

The mind stone? Retrieved. Now all he had to do was deliver. Scanning the area for the exit, Steve heard footsteps coming from behind. He gripped his shield. 

Instead of Hydra, he saw his past self looking furiously at him. 

They fought. Steve tried to explain, but he knew it was useless. If he ever saw someone claiming to be him from the future, he would’ve politely sent them directions to the nearest psychiatrist. 

Fighting himself was an experience. At first, he assumed that he’d easily hold off his past self long enough to escape, and that was that. But seeing a younger, more innocent version of himself deliver every punch with passion and justice made Steve feel nostalgic. 

Nostalgic, for better times. The present Steve had a mission too. Get the stones, undo the damage Thanos had done and avenge the universe. And to achieve that, he would do whatever it takes. 

Including fight a younger version of him to get the mind stone.

His past self is distracted for a second when he sees both shields clashing. Having thought that it was one of Loki’s illusions, seeing the shields bounce off each other made the past captain confused. Using this to his advantage, present Steve tried to push the other one away from the mind stone.

Right when his back was turned, he was tripped and restrained. A locket fell out, causing both of them to stop for a millisecond and look. It was the locket with Peggy’s photo in it. 

The two Steves were wrestling madly now, both having equal power. But one of them had more experience, and he knew to use that experience to his advantage. Once again, he waited for the perfect timing and said something. A revelation that had changed his life.

“Bucky,” Steve said softly, “is alive.”

Steve reached for the sceptre, and the fight was over.

Looking at his now concussed past self was very weird. Steve didn’t know why he stood there for longer than necessary, but for some reason he didn’t stop himself.

Maybe because the first thought that came to mind was, “That is America’s ass.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Now here's a quick question... do you want to see more of the 2012 Avengers dealing with the aftermath, or more of Loki escaping and doing whatever?


End file.
